1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to an intelligent electronic air suspension system that automatically adjusts its air pressure and, in particular, to a system that can immediately and actively adjust the settings of the air shock absorber of the vehicle according to the user's needs.
2. Related Art
The suspension system effectively provides cushion and reduces vibrations for a moving vehicle to avoid violent jitters. Simply put, the suspension system is a structure between a vehicle body and its tires. In addition to supporting the vehicle, it also provides passengers with better comfort. Traditional suspension systems include passive suspension and mechanical suspension. They usually consist of springs, shock absorbers, links, control arms, and stabilizer bars. The primary function of a suspension system is to support the vehicle body, frame, passengers, and cargos. It absorbs vibrations as the vehicles runs on an uneven road, thereby reducing direct damages to the vehicle structure. The vibrational energy transferred to the vehicle body is reduced to an extent that passengers feel comfortable.
Currently, most vehicle suspension systems use spiral springs as the buffering elements. They have been used for quite a long time in the vehicle industry. They indeed can achieve the basic shock absorbing effect.
However, further analysis of the spiral spring details that the elastic supporting range of it has been fixed in the beginning. There is no way to adjust it during usage. Please refer to ROC Pat. No. M251958. It proposes an adjustable damping device. Its damping parameter (CIT), where C is the pressing side and T is pulling side, enables the user to adjust according to needs (vehicle and road conditions).
The common spiral spring shock absorbers with adjustable damping parameters include a traditional spring and a damper. The spring has a fixed spring constant K, and the damper has a damping parameter C/T, where C is the pressing side and T is the pulling side. However, the combination of an adjustable damping value CIT and a fixed spring constant K in the prior art does not have significant effects.
Although the above-mentioned spiral spring shock absorber with an adjustable damping parameter already roughly solves problems in conventional shock absorbers. However, it can only slightly improve the comfort and controllability by adjusting the damping parameter. It cannot make changes and adjustments to the dynamical level and height of the vehicle.
In other words, when a vehicle goes uphill/downhill, carries weights, suddenly accelerates/decelerates, or encounters a concave/convex road surface, the tires have different extents of sinking or floating relative to the vehicle body. The above-mentioned spiral spring shock absorber with an adjustable damping parameter cannot completely deal with such situations. The driver or passengers inside the vehicle would feel uncomfortable. Therefore, they will cause damages to the vehicle body in the long run. Besides, for a truck with a heavy load, uneven weights may tilt the vehicle body. Moreover, the shock absorber is depressed for a long time. This will shorten the lifetime of the shock absorber.
Moreover, there are shock absorbers made using air springs as the buffering elements. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,420,462 “AIR SPRING DISTANCE INDICATING SYSTEM AND METHOD” and U.S. Pat. No. 7,331,571 “INTEGRATED SOLENOID VALVE AND AIR STRUT ASSEMBLY” disclose the technique of using air springs in a vehicle system. Nevertheless, they still have inconvenience in practice. That is, they cannot perform real-time detections for all sorts of road conditions as the vehicle moves and make the corresponding adjustments at the same time.
Overall, the above-mentioned prior art does not provide active adjustments for various kinds of road and vehicle conditions. It is thus desirable to have more improvements.